Since the Crash
by bebitched
Summary: Not everything is what it seems. Rating for drug references and mild sexual content. Oneshot.


Boone came to live on the dusty streets of an old town in Mexico, where the old women looked at him sideways in his wife beater tank-tops and sun glasses more for show than to block out the light. If he'd guessed, this was not where he'd have expected to be two years ago.

His clients were mostly women twenty years post-beauty pageant who'd fallen too far too fast and had come south of the border for a nip tuck that wouldn't go down officially in the books of the plastic surgeon husband that lived next door.

He passed them the little pills in glass vials, purely sanitary, he'd assure them as they downed the first in one gulp. They trusted him because he was a pretty white boy from the estates and manicured lawns of rich suburbia. In fact it's how he'd gotten his start, with his mother's friends who'd never breathe a word of truth to anyone about his throw-away cell phone or his offshore accounts. They were liars and cheaters and in his situation they were the ones he could rely on.

His mother wasn't ashamed of him, and that was fairly disappointing. Boone wanted to see the look on her face whenever someone politely questioned her about the son that never came home for the holidays and what his current profession happened to be. Yet she kept sending him clients as if patting him on the head. As if she was playing the good mother, keeping her son afloat.

---

Boone was careful with his money, how much he earned and where he kept it (never enough to raise suspicion, never in one place) and after awhile it was almost as if he was just on vacation from the cubicles and managerial paperwork of typical American life. He was still the boy that played tennis with blonde girls he could someday marry and raise an army of Anglo-Saxon children with, who wore polo shirts and talked about the weather with his mother's friends at the club. He would remind himself every-so-often that was the life he'd escaped from. There was no fiancé with martini's waiting at home. Only a back ally and several shots of tequila.

That part wasn't disappointing, nor unexpected.

---

He operated out of a motel where people didn't ask questions or eavesdrop, where the maids didn't blink an eye at blood stains and would disinfect gunshot wounds if you paid them a nice tip.

Boone wasn't the fishiest fish in the sea anymore, but he'd had his share of trouble. He'd only been stabbed once, but the cut wasn't deep and it healed within the month. He bought a gun, slept with it under his pillow and only fired it one time. His hands smelled like sulfur and the barrel was hot. The bloody clothes in the dumpster never traced back to him.

---

Everyone thought he was coward, whose bark was louder and meaner than his bite. Boone couldn't say they were liars, because he'd exaggerated far too often to call anyone's kettle black, but he was tougher than the other's gave him credit. More so than before the crash, of course.

---

The world didn't make sense anymore, didn't feel right against his skin or in his lungs. Tap water tasted salty on his tongue and sand was everywhere, but he couldn't shake the feeling it was all just in his imagination. The crash had turned the world upside down, skewed reality, and he couldn't see straight. This wasn't right.

Except it was.

---

Shannon came to visit once, but it was short and she wasn't there to see him. She was there for the booze and the pills and the men, but as it turned out there wasn't much of any available to her. Bartenders made a point of not serving minors, didn't want the kids on spring break to invade every year, some staying as a means of grabbing attention from their parents, making them fly over to get them.

She had cried tears blackened with mascara into her water, whispering nonsense about guns and maps. He knew she was drunk, he just didn't know how. Curled up in his bed, her sobs subsided only after he'd hummed the same tune her father used to before she was too old for it all and he was dead.

Shannon had told him this one night on the roof under the stars, her speech slurred and her defenses down from the spiked eggnog at his mother's holiday party. He'd covered her with a blanket and wished snow would fall to cover over everything dirty. But it was California, and even if it was cold enough, there could never be enough snow for it all.

The crash had messed with her mind more than his, he thought, but then he realizes that he wasn't exactly an objective observer.

Her flight left at noon but he got her there in his Camaro by eleven, aware she wasn't near lucid or dependable enough to do mush more than wander.

---

What Boone remembers about the crash he tries to forget, tries to let it fade away, a bad dream that mixes like paint with reality until the two are indistinguishable. This isn't orange, he thinks. It's red. Red and yellow. He nods.

Red and yellow.

Monstrous aluminum frames don't fall from the sky.

---

There's a girl in the shops that Boone follows. She's not the type to be his client, young and Hispanic, not waspy and middle-aged, so he shouldn't be curious. Curiosity gets you killed. Yet he can't shake the feeling he's seen her before.

She catches him following her, through the butcher's shop and down into an ally. Although she's intimidating as she spins on him, advances on him, and he's sure in his old life he'd be scared, she's intriguing. Boone forces her to introduce herself, except the name through gritted teeth doesn't set off any bells.

Boone doesn't know an Ana.

---

Memories flip through his mind like days on a calender, ripping off and crumping to the side when he's done with them. The sequence is jagged, doesn't fit together as nicely as he'd like, and although he's sure that's normal in these situations, the discrepancies make him nervous.

There's Carribean blue beneath them, sandy shores that look far more like concrete from above and they're falling. The girl sitting behind them screams, but Shannon doesn't.

The one behind them doesn't make it.

---

Boone rolls over, sheets tangled between his legs and across his torso. He stretches out his fingers in front of his face, recalling a time when they'd been pale, unworked, lifeless.

Lifeless. He repeats it in his head. No, that's not it at all.

Ana stirs beside him.

Boone slips his hand over her waist instead, noting the contrast between the white of the sheets and his tan, weathered fingers. This is real.

She pauses to take in her surroundings before reaching over to the night stand and removing her watch. She slips it over her wrist, but doesn't face him.

It's better this way.

---

Boone hates driving around the cliffs, where even the most experienced driver could make one false turn and...

It isn't his fault if he does.

---

Passing by a church on his way through town, Boone thinks they put too much stock in God.

He supposes that's the concept of faith; there's no rhyme or reason, you just know the truth. Boone has never done well just believing.

He'd never say it out loud, he knows how they pray to Jesus to bring them salvation and cross their chests like it'll save them.

There's a man emerging from the confessional this time. The building is small and the doors are swung open like arms inviting him it, so he can distinguish the lines on the other man's face, the concentration as he dips his fingers into the holy water.

Their eyes meet as he exits the church, his dirty blonde hair falling half over his eyes as he strolls straight and distinctly toward what Boone recalls North should be. The guitar neck sticks out like an extra limb from his back and as he passes by he mutters, "'s okay, mate. I died once too."

Boone thinks he must recognize the hesitation, the hesitation to believe, in his expression. Must be some religious metaphor for finding God.

That must be it.

---

The sun beats down from the cloudless sky, flooding the convertible with light and warmth. They're laughing and talking, getting to know his roommate's new girlfriend, Heather he thinks. Heather lounges in the backseat, directly behind the driver. The safest seat.

Boone remembers the jiggle of seats beneath him. The steep drop in the pit of his stomach. There's a scream, but it doesn't make a difference and then the water is coming in around him. Shannon grabs hold of his arm.

There's darkness. The darkness he can remember, the darkness is all he wants to remember. But there's also flashing red and helicopter blades spinning round and round above them. Everything is too loud and too quiet, and he wishes it would just stop.

This is ridiculous. He's a good driver.

Boone has a concussion and Shannon has a broken wrist but Heather... Heather didn't make it. The car is totaled but even if it weren't he'd still have to live with the waterlogged seats and the blood. The blood is everywhere.

---

Boone hasn't been the same since the crash.

But Shannon is worse off, he thinks.


End file.
